On-page SEO is everything you control on the page itself: the title, meta description, headings, content, links, images, URL, and technical signals. This checklist walks through each item in the order you should fix it, and points to the free CheckSEO tool that verifies whether you got it right.
Related reading: SEO Search , Index Coverage , Content , Links .
Give every page a unique title (around 50-60 characters) with the primary keyword near the front, and a compelling meta description (around 150-160 characters) that earns the click. Avoid duplicate titles across pages. Use the Keyword Suggestions tool to confirm your target keyword actually appears in the title.
Use exactly one H1 that describes the page, then organise content under descriptive H2 and H3 subheadings. A clear heading hierarchy helps both readers and search engines understand the page. The Content Analyzer flags missing H1s and weak heading structure.
Write genuinely useful, original content that answers the visitor's intent. Cover the topic thoroughly, keep paragraphs readable, and avoid thin or duplicated text. Depth and clarity matter more than hitting a fixed word count.
Link from the page to related pages using descriptive anchor text, and make sure important pages receive internal links so they are not orphaned. The Internal Links Analyzer shows body-content links, broken links, and pages with weak internal support.
Compress images for fast loading and give each meaningful image descriptive ALT text. Good ALT coverage supports accessibility and image search. The SEO Search audit reports image ALT coverage for the page.
Use short, readable URLs, set a self-referencing canonical, and make sure the page is not accidentally blocked by robots.txt or a noindex tag. The Index Coverage guide and Robots.txt Validator help confirm the page is eligible to be indexed.
Start with the SEO Search tool to review the website quickly and understand the initial score.
Move into the Projects dashboard to track the website as an ongoing SEO project.
Open the related module pages like SEO Reports, Index Coverage, Sitemap, Robots, Content, and Links to understand the result in detail.
These internal links use targeted anchor text so visitors and search engines can move naturally across the main website SEO review topics.
SEO Search gives visitors an instant website audit view before they start project monitoring.
Index CoverageIndex Coverage shows whether website URLs are eligible, excluded, risky, or in need of review based on CheckSEO signals.
ContentContent Analyzer helps users review body-content quality, section structure, and on-page strength.
LinksLinks Analyzer explains how body-content links support crawl discovery, page authority flow, and technical health.
Keyword SuggestionsKeyword Suggestions analyzes any page and recommends targeted keywords across 4 categories plus gap recommendations.
On-page SEO is the set of optimisations you control directly on a web page — the title tag, meta description, headings, content, internal links, images, URL, and indexability signals. It is distinct from off-page SEO, which covers external signals like backlinks.
At minimum: a unique keyword-focused title and meta description, a single clear H1 with structured subheadings, useful original content, descriptive internal links, optimised images with ALT text, a clean URL with a canonical tag, and confirmation that the page is indexable.
Enter your page URL into the CheckSEO free SEO audit to get a report on titles, headings, content, links, images, and technical signals. You can then use the Content Analyzer, Links Analyzer, and Keyword Suggestions tools to verify individual checklist items.
Review on-page SEO whenever you publish or significantly update a page, and re-audit important pages periodically so issues like broken internal links, thin content, or accidental noindex tags are caught early.
It's simple: enter your website URL on our free audit page and get a full SEO report — score, issues, and recommended fixes — delivered to your email. No signup needed.